Software Defined Automation Platform (SDAP) - revised

物联网（IoT）是物理设备、车辆、建筑物和其他嵌入电子设备、软件传感器、执行器和网络连接的信息源的内部网络，使这些对象能够收集和交换数据。与智能服务一起，它们可以处理物理和虚拟世界的信息并做出反应，这形成了推动当前数字革命的新技术现象之一。一个主要的需求是为时间关键的工业监控应用提供一个强大的实时解决方案。这就需要为单个设备提供远程操作控制重要过程的能力，并整理来自许多设备的数据，为预测决策提供大数据分析。这就是工业物联网（IIoT）。由于几个原因，目前安装的（工业）控制系统主要是封闭和专有的。这与它们下面的开放的、可互操作的仪器设备网络和典型自动化层次结构上面的信息技术（IT）系统形成对比。封闭的专有系统的升级和维护成本很高，并且在尝试插入新技术（尤其是来自第三方的技术）时具有挑战性。（来源：开放过程自动化（tm）业务指南）。通过提供运行在商用硬件上的软件定义的解决方案，能够对整个地产进行远程更新，解决了这些问题，节省了成本，并对供应有了长期的信心。该项目将提供：•灵活的开放式解决方案，支持时间关键型应用的虚拟化工作负载•简化的“监控和数据采集”（SCADA）集成。•支持一系列时间关键用例，包括闭环控制，工业数据推理和虚拟化PLC应用•可扩展的容器化配置使部署的系统能够随着部署的其他应用而发展•可以使用最新的英特尔和ARM超低功耗单片系统（SOC）处理器的解决方案我们的目标是实现独立于硅，操作系统，硬件和应用程序提供商；该解决方案可以在高度嵌入式设备上独立运行，也可以与其他基于Edge的系统一起交付。最初的参考实现是对Linux基金会的EdgeX开放物联网边缘平台的扩展，但最终该解决方案可以为其他边缘平台提供时间关键扩展，例如AWS GreengrassEdgeX是一个供应商中立的开源项目，为工业物联网（IIoT）和边缘计算构建了一个通用的开放框架。EdgeX得到了广泛的采用和广泛的行业支持，它提供了一个很好的参考平台，在这个平台上可以验证这个项目的输出。

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the inter-networking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, and other information sources embedded with electronics, software sensors, actuators and network connectivity which enable these objects to collect and exchange data. Together with the intelligent services to allow them to process information of the physical and the virtual world and react, this forms one of the new technological phenomena driving the current digital revolution.A major need is to have a robust, real time solution for time critical industrial monitoring and control applications. This follows the need to provide individual devices with the ability to operate remotely controlling vital processes, and collate data from many devices feeding big data analytics for predictive decision making. This is the Industrial IoT (IIoT).For several reasons, currently installed (industrial) control systems are predominantly closed and proprietary. This contrasts to the open, interoperable network of instrumentation devices below them and the Information Technology (IT) systems above in the typical automation hierarchy.Closed, proprietary systems are expensive to upgrade and maintain, and challenging when trying to insert new technology, especially from third parties. (Source: The Open Process Automation(tm) Business Guide).By providing software defined solutions running on commodity hardware, capable of remote updates to an entire estate, these issues are addressed offering costs savings and long-term confidence of supply.This project will deliver:•A flexible open solution supporting virtualized workloads for time-critical applications•A simplified "Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition" (SCADA) integration.•Support a range of time-critical use cases including closed loop control, industrial data inference, and virtualized PLC applications•Extensible containerized provisioning enabling a deployed system to evolve as additional applications are deployed•A solution that can use the latest Intel and ARM ultra-low power System-On-a Chip (SOC) processorsOur objective is an implementation independent of silicon, operating system, hardware and application provider; the solution will run stand alone on highly embedded devices or be delivered in conjunction with other Edge based systems. The initial reference implementations are an extension to the Linux Foundation's EdgeX open IoT Edge Platform, but ultimately the solution could provide time-critical extensions to other Edge Platforms e.g. AWS GreengrassEdgeX is a vendor-neutral open source project building a common open framework for Industrial IoT (IIoT), edge computing. EdgeX is seeing wide scale adoption and broad industry support, it provides an excellent reference platform on which the output of this project can be validated.